A new budget proposal released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could end Colorado’s status as a global hotspot for federally funded climate research.
The document posted to the agency’s website on Monday details cuts laid out by earlier budget documents. If approved by Congress, the plan for the agency’s upcoming 2026 fiscal year, beginning in October, would eliminate 17 percent of its nearly 13,000-person workforce and slash its annual budget by roughly $1.5 billion, a 30 percent cut below its funding for the last full fiscal year.
Those cuts would also eliminate the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, the agency’s research arm charged with finding ways to improve weather and ocean forecasting. The office oversees four labs at the David Skaggs Research Center in Boulder: the Chemical Sciences Laboratory, the Global Monitoring Laboratory, the Global Systems Laboratory and the Physical Sciences Laboratory…